Creaks, Faces and Glass: teacher key

Ghosts, grade 7 edition, written for 7th grade. Houses creak, shadows look like faces and a stage trick once made a see-through figure. Plain causes can explain many spooky feelings, and investigators have ways to check them.

Read the book. Print this page for the key.

Questions and answers

1. What is pareidolia?
   • A kind of sound
   • Seeing faces in things that have no faces (answer)
   • A stage trick with glass
2. Why can some floors make more noise in cold weather?
   • Winter air dries wood out, so the boards shrink (answer)
   • Heavy snow presses on the roof
   • Warm air makes boards swell shut
3. What made the Pepper's ghost trick work?
   • A tall mirror on the ceiling
   • A hidden actor in bright light and a big angled pane of glass (answer)
   • A fog machine in the floor
4. What did Vic Tandy trace eerie feelings in a lab to?
   • A broken pipe
   • A cold draft
   • A faulty extractor fan that made very low sound (answer)
5. Why does a poll not show what caused a feeling in a room?
   • A poll shows what people believe, not what caused anything (answer)
   • Polls only ask children
   • Polls count creaks
6. What does expand mean when wood gets warm?
   • Get smaller
   • Get bigger (answer)
   • Get softer

Words

• pareidolia: seeing faces
• infrasound: very low sound
• expand: get bigger
• contract: get smaller
• spectre: ghostly shadow